Happy Thanksgiving!

So it’s been a very busy week. Recently, I was assigned to a new project working with some Ferrari dealerships throughout China. Hence, much of this week was spent meeting with people who work for Ferrari, meeting with people who work for the dealership, and partying with them.

Monday night I was up until 4:00 am at a crazy night of Karaoke with the President of HighTeam, some other co-workers and a bunch of Ferrari people. By the way, Karaoke is HUGE here, and I probably go once every two to three weeks.

Tuesday and Wednesday were filled with more meetings and some research, but that’s not fun to write about, so lets move on to Thanksgiving. Erica (an American co-worker of mine) and I took off work early on Thursday. We were able to do this because our boss put us into a television commercial for the 600 days until the Beijing Olympics celebration that is going on in December. I’ll try to get a tape of it, since I’ll be standing there looking like a freak speaking Spanish on Beijing television. It’ll be something to show the kids. But anyways, back to thanksgiving. We took off early, because we felt it was only fair that we should get some time off for being subjected to humiliation in front of all of Beijing, and went to our friend Ralph’s parents’ house.

Once there, we began cooking, watching movies (Thank You For Smoking, Euro Trip and The Big Lebowski), and so forth. We did it potlatch style, so everybody brought a dish that is popular in their birth-location. I brought cheese bread. It was delicious.

After everybody arrived (about 20 people, in all), we got together and played a very intense game of kickball. It was awesomely sweet. I forgot entirely how much I love that game! The pollution made breathing a little bit difficult, but we had an excellent time anyways. And people really, really got into it. There were several excellent dives to try and prevent getting tagged out, and one dive (read “trip”) and crawl due to running in heeled shoes. The only negative part of the intensity was that I was ragingly sore on Friday, but I still feel that fun was worth the pain.

After that, dinner time. We had a turkey, two roast ducks, stuffing (my personal favorite of the food), salads, sweet and regular potatoes, beans, cranberry sauce, wine, beer, and multiple deserts. Holy cow was it delicious. Perhaps too delicious, actually, since I definitely ate enough to put myself into a pretty severe food coma. Once my photos are posted on web-shots, you may be able to tell when that was, since I took probably 6 or 7 pictures from the same spot on the same couch where I laid down to digest my food. That series of photos pretty much sums up the rest of the night. Everybody just sat, talked, digested food, etc. and then we went home. I know that my description doesn’t do it justice, but Thursday was probably the best day that I’ve had in Beijing since I arrived.

Friday was a fun day of work. Since I’ve been doing this Ferrari thing, one of the guys who we work with got some tickets to the Beijing International Auto Show for a couple of co-workers and me, so we took a trip over there for some research. It was pretty cool seeing all of the new concept cars and the interesting floor setups that the various companies created. Probably the coolest thing that I saw, though, was the dancing robot that Honda made. It was totally sweet! It could walk, dance, stand on one foot, and it almost seemed human. I have a video of it that I’ll try to post on Webshots, but we’ll see how that turns out.

The other interesting part of the auto show was the exotic cars area. Maseratis, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Porches, and, of course, Ferraris were all there. The co-workers and I even got to go into the VIP areas of the Maserati and Ferrari areas. If anybody strikes it rich and wants to buy me a Ferrari (since I won’t be buying one even if I happen to strike it rich . . . they’re too expensive), the 612 is my choice. I have a picture of me standing next to it in the photo page.

Other than these little anecdotes, nothing too interesting is going on. I’m continuing to learn Chinese, I’m hooked on the TV show Scrubs, I like to read when I have spare time, etc. It’s a decent life.

I hope that everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I look forward to hearing from anybody who wants to write!

Here's the photo site again for people who haven't yet bookmarked it (I'll post the photos in a couple of days): http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger

Mike and I Cross Paths

So Thursday the 9^th, I took a little trip to Shanghai. Almost missed my flight due to waking up 17 minutes after I planned to leave the apartment to catch my cab to the apartment, but no big deal, I ended up making it on time (thank God that there weren’t any traffic jams on the way J).

Anywhoo . . . the first day and a half of the trip was spent working. I went to observe an event and sub-event that we were throwing to get some ideas for new things to start researching. It was interesting stuff and I had some new ideas come to mind for Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) stuff that we’re working on, but it’s probably not interesting for anybody reading this, so I’ll skip it.

Thursday night, after my first ever trip to Hooters (with four of the big bosses in HighTeam), I met up with Mike. The first night was basically just chill-time. Catching up, chatting, walking around Shanghai, etc.; nice and relaxing. Friday after I finished working we traveled around Shanghai to the Bund, Peoples Square, a history museum, etc. During that time I learned that Shanghai is a completely different world from Beijing. In the very commercial, touristy areas, we couldn’t walk for more than five minutes without being asked if we wanted a “lady massage,” or being approached by “art students” who wanted to show us some of the work they were exhibiting. Also, the cab drivers were terrible! They weren’t any crazier on the road than Beijing drivers, but they would do anything to rip off westerners (or “big noses” as the Shanghainese seem to like to call us). I’ve had one bad cab experience in Beijing in the whole three months that I’ve been here. But in four days in Shanghai, three cab drivers tried to rip me off. After a certain amount of yelling, though, I was able to work the second two back to a reasonable fare (for the first one, I was just too lazy and tired to bother).

Saturday, Mike had to work for a while so I met up with a Shanghainese friend of mine named Orlando. He did an internship in Madison in the summer of ’05. With him and a buddy of his, Benny, we went to a couple of commercial/tourist areas and just walked around; I didn’t really care to buy anything since almost all of the same stuff exists in Beijing (and often at lower prices, DVDs being the exception). We then temporarily parted ways so that Orlando could go home for dinner with some relatives, but not before planning to meet up for some awesome bar-time that night.

So, after freshening up, meeting up with Mike, having some dinner, and drinking three nice sized bottles of beer while watching Underworld Revolutions (we made a rule that we had to take a drink whenever Kate Beckinsale looked hot . . . good game), it was off to enjoy the Shanghai nightlife. We went to club DKD, and again had a bad encounter with a cab driver who dropped us off about three blocks from our destination and pointed vaguely in the direction that we were supposed to go. After several calls to Orlando, though we eventually made our way to the club and began the fun.

Johnny Walker Black and green tea is a drink of choice for the Chinese, but I personally find it disgusting. So I was stuck with Johnny Walker on the rocks . . . mmm. After a little bit of that and a wonderful dice game, we (meaning I, Mike, Orlando, and some of Orlando’s friends) hit the dance floor. It was a good time. The DJ was good, the music was decent, and dancing was fun. Too bad none of us had any game, so after a couple of hours of that we went to McDonalds for some late-night food.

The game that we (we now being Mike, Orlando and I) played on the way there was the “Try to get Mike to say funny things in Chinese” game. So that provided plenty of entertainment for Orlando and me. I don’t know if the actually phrases or Mike’s wacky drunken pronunciation were funnier . . . some combination of them kept us giggling like freaks the whole way to McDonalds, though.

At McDonalds, Mike started insisting that he could speak Chinese with the best of em, and proceeded to push us out of the way to order for everybody. Apparently he got his point across, even though the cashier kept laughing whenever Mike turned around to show us that he could order, because we got our food. And man was it delicious.

After that, it was time to head home so the three of us caught a cab. Mike insisted on us dropping Orlando off first even though he was 30 minutes in the opposite direction of my hotel and Mike’s apartment. We kept telling him that it didn’t make any sense, but Mike was the only one who knew where he and I had to go (so now he really did know the most important Chinese phrase as far as I and Orlando were concerned). However, Orlando, being the crafty guy that he is, agreed to go towards his home so we could drop him of there, and then promptly direct the cab driver in the general direction of my hotel. After about a 10 minute drive, he stopped and got out leaving Mike dumbfounded and with no choice other than to direct the cab driver to head towards my hotel. So I got home at the reasonable hour of 4am.

The next day I had my flight home at 2pm, so I gave Mike a call around 10:45am to grab some lunch before I left, but he was too tired. Lame, but whatever . . . we had a fun time. So I grabbed some lunch and headed back to Beijing!

This past week has been another relatively normal one at work. I’m now working as a strategic consultant on a year-long marketing plan for four Ferrari and Maserati dealerships in China. We give our initial ideas next Friday, and we’ll see where the project goes from there!

P.S. more photos will be up soon at http://community.webshots.com/user/ngpinger.

P.P.S John Tucker Must Die wasn't as bad as the previews made it out to be, exept for the ending, and Scrubs may be the greatest show ever.

"Ya know . . . this is a Great Wall . . . "

Written on November 7, 2006

Contrary to popular knowledge, or though my email would have me believe is popular knowledge, I am not dead. Rather, I have been experiencing technical difficulties with computer access outside of work. It all started with my apple power sending out a bright little display of sparks and then sizzling slowly until the indicator light that tells when the computer is being charged went dead. I debated long and hard about whether I should just use the company computer or whether I should buy a replacement charger since I knew that the apple sales people would gouge the crap out of me if I tried to buy one here in China. After getting a sore back lugging home the late 1990s size laptop in my man-bag once or twice, I broke down and decided to buy the charger. And it only cost me $120 . . . a 75% markup from US prices . . . freaking shipping costs . . .

So as of Saturday, I had a charged home computer. And since I would also have a charged home computer on Sunday, I decided to relax Saturday afternoon knowing that I could tell you all how I was doing on Sunday. Boy was that a miscalculation. Saturday night I decided to take a little trip out to the bars (now I know what you’re thinking . . . he must have drank too much and gotten a massive hangover . . . but just you wait and see) and, realizing that I had work to do on Sunday and that I really, really wanted to let you all know how I was doing via a blog post, I decided to take it easy on the drinking. After a measly three beers in two hours at the bar, I packed it up and headed home at the socially unacceptable time of 12:30 am. For those of you still on Madison Standard Drinking Time, that would be 1.5 hours before bar time. In Beijing, where there is no bar time, it’s just plain pathetic. But I was feeling very prudent. And what did I get for all of my forethought and responsibility? YES! A migraine AND a headcold! So Sunday did not prove to be the productive day of work and blogging that I had planned. Instead, it was a mixture of me moaning, because for some reason the sound of my own discomfort rather effectively took my mind off the pain in my head, and blowing my nose. So that was fun . . .

On to Monday: I went to work, feeling much better I might add, and had a very productive day. Work finished, on to Chinese class. Chinese class finishes, time to go home and write some blog entries. Get home, start up the computer, and a happy little message greets me: “Cannot find PPPoE server.” Hurray! Now my internet is down, though I haven’t yet paid a bill, so I can take some blame for this problem. Anywhoo, after crying like a little girl for several hours, I decided that I was too depressed to write last night.

Today, however, I am a new man! And here I am to relate to you everything wonderful about China (but you won’t get it until tomorrow, because my internet is still down and I’m writing this in a Word document).

First things first: the Great Wall. Not last Friday, but the Friday before that, I went to the Great Wall. Actually I went to the Great Wall twice in one day, for work research. The first place that I went to was rather dull: a touristy area by a big dam on a run-down portion of the wall. The highlight of the trip to that portion of the wall was the local Chinese yelling when I took off my shirt because my friend Carolyn was trying to take a picture of me and said my jacket was too dark and didn’t stand out enough against the dark hills in the background so I took of my shirt because I’m really pale and, sure enough, you can see me in the picture (even though that sentence was a major run-on, or maybe because it was a major run-on, it was really fun to write . . . I’m in a weird mood . . . ). So yeah, boring part of the wall. If you come to visit me, I will not take you there.

The second part of the wall, though, was really, really cool. There were 10 kilometers or so of completely restored wall. Pictures are the best way to get a feel for it, so go look at them! The only bad part about this portion of the wall was that it was about 4 hours away by car. And this is 4 hours with an insane driver. Let me tell a little story about her . . .

Pardon my French, and cover your kids’ eyes if they’re reading, but this lady had BALLS OF STEEL. I mean, I’ve encountered people who I thought were fearless before, but wow! The car ride up wasn’t so bad. It just involved an average disregard for signs, lanes, etc. that were created to keep drivers and passengers safe. On the way home though, if I had to give a rough estimate for the amount of time that we spent in a lane that did not contain oncoming traffic, I’d guess it was somewhere around 65%. Further breakdown follows: About 30% of the time, we were the party that would have been liable had an accident occurred since we were on the wrong side of the road taking on not only other mid-size sedans, but big freaking gravel trucks that would’ve squashed us like little bugs if they would’ve hit us, in an exhilarating game of chicken. Another 5% of the time some jerk was in our lane trying to cheat death in a similar manner. The remaining 65% of the time, as I mentioned, we were safe.

So that was the Great Wall trip. After that little expedition, I was supposed to watch scary movies with a friend of mine (whose name I should totally give out so that you can send her hate mail on Facebook) since it was Halloween weekend and all, but she backed out so I was forced to watch When A Stranger Calls all by myself. It was a scary movie in theory, but I just couldn’t relate to the main character. I mean I’ve never babysat for such a rich family and my boy troubles just aren’t . . . ok this joke is already going to far.

Sorry folks, all this sarcasm is making me tired. I’m going to go get a massage (I don’t have anything that can compete with the driver-lady for entertainment anyways). Toodles!